


in the shadow of the tides

by InsufferableArchanist



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Dark Jack Frost (Guardians of Childhood), Fighting, Implied Violence, M/M, apply some jack frost fearling overlord and voila, corrupted jack, he can't be out here all noble and boring, hey what can i say hate the game not the player, kozmotis needed to be traumatized okay it's the only way he gets hot, light frost play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28281060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsufferableArchanist/pseuds/InsufferableArchanist
Summary: kozmotis pitchiner, general of the lunanoff kingdom and defender of the constellations, has a nasty encounter while hunting down a band of fearlings on the edge of an uncharted galaxy.
Relationships: Jack Frost/Kozmotis Pitchiner
Kudos: 13





	in the shadow of the tides

**Author's Note:**

> this is for the rotg secret santa over on tumblr: **22\. Dark Jack/Uncorrupted Kozmotis (Pirate/Navy sort of vibe)**. if you're reading, i hope you enjoy it!

His first warning had been the wind.

Sailing through the skies of the Lunanoff’s kingdom went about as smoothly as could be expected; Kozmotis Pitchiner had seen to that himself, and now he could perhaps admit that the deck of his ship was more familiar to him than the feeling of solid ground. He was used to the artificial gravity of his galleon, the _Dreamweaver_ , that friction that flirted with weightlessness, keeping one’s heels to the deck but letting the stomach flutter and turn.

The same enchantments kept his crew’s body temperatures in check, no matter their species. Short of sailing close to a star in the middle of a birth or burst, there was precious little that could be done to alter that magic. And yet.

And yet, as they had sailed through the outer bands of the sky, hunting after a report of fearlings, Kozmotis Pitchener had felt a cold gust sweep against him. It seemed to pull at his coat, run through his hair, glance against his cheek, leave his lips and nose tingling. 

He’d had no words for it; he was not used to the cold. Every proper planet was temperate, most varying between only a few degrees between seasons. The chill had taken him aback, but there had been nothing to suggest that it was anything other than a slight anomaly as the _Dreamweaver_ swept around the whorl of a galaxy it was now in, its drift nearly as peaceable and sleepy as the planets they were approaching.

A kick remained in his stomach, though, making it noticeably flutter for the first time in years. He wondered at it as they wove between a cluster of planets, looking down at the one they’d marked most likely inhabitable. Barely. Then again, fearlings weren’t known to be picky, and they might take their chances.

It had seemed unlikely, though, as they drifted by, and not even a peep of a dream or hiss of a nightmare could be detected. 

When they curved around the planet, Kozmotis felt that queer chill at his face, again, and was surprised to see several ships rounding from the moon. They hadn’t seen it, hidden perfectly in the trajectory of the planet’s shadow. 

_More thinking than fearlings usually get up to_ , Kozmotis thought to himself, taking the situation in.

There was no way to outrun the small gunners that were making their way for the Dreamweaver so swiftly. They would simply have to face them head on, he thought, and prepared to give the orders as another chilling wind buffeted his whole being.

Overhead, the sails of the _Dreamweaver_ fluttered violently, and he heard the groans of his crew as their ship rocked in the chill of the wind. The general’s hand was on his sword as he tried to push himself off of the wheel, and he found himself looking up into colourless eyes set in an equally drained visage.

“Boo,” said the figure, followed by a laugh as Kozmotis slashed upwards, neatly between the pegs of the helm. 

He hadn’t blinked, but now he did - the figure was no longer there.

Kozmotis spun on his heel, looking round, only to catch the slip of a boy land neatly behind him, as if gently floating to his deck, unbound by any constraints or considerations of his physical being. It was enough to make him wary, even if the contrast of his appearance weren’t the sort to immediately make one so. Which it very much was - white as a star and dark as the void, in disparate parts.

“Who are you?” Kozmotis demanded, drawing himself up to his full height. It was not unimpressive, and certainly not in the face of the slight boy before him, who seemed to wield nothing more than a piece of wood, twisted and bent like a cane near the top. He leaned on it heavily, dark hair sweeping forward, shading his eyes. 

“Don’t you recognize me?” the boy asked, and Kozmotis only frowned more, his mind racing with calculations of how quickly the other ships must be approaching. Where had the boy, himself, come from? There seemed to be no other parties with him, not yet.

“I don’t,” Kozmotis told him definitively, his sword still pointed outwards. “I’m General Kozmotis Pitchiner of the Lunanoff Kingdom. My crew is hunting fearlings reported on the outer band of the Tidal galaxy. Are you with them?”

The brief rapport only made the boy rock forward dangerously on his staff, so closely that Kozmotis instinctively made to catch him, and by default had to catch himself when he swung in the other direction, laughing, his head tossed back.

“You might say… They’re with me,” the boy said.

“And who are you?” Kozmotis asked again, losing patience. 

“Call me Jack,” the boy said, twirling his staff ably and tucking it under one arm, sweeping the other out as he gave a low bow. When he rose, Kozmotis had the tip of his sword level with the boy’s nose.

“Why would a band of fearlings follow a boy?”

“I think you’ll find scavengers tend to follow the most able predators.”

Kozmotis had barely a moment to catch the strange glint in Jack’s eye before he was up again, and he felt his own body slammed back against the wheel of the helm by icy air, despite the fact the boy had done little more than tip his staff in his direction. 

Worse still, his hand was stuck to the outer rim of the wheel with a thick coating of glittering ice. It spread in ferns of frost up his arm and out toward the wheel, his palm stuck fast, along with his sword. He felt the flutter of his stomach kick up to a turn as he pulled against it with all his might.

Jack walked towards him slowly, bending at his waist to catch Kozmotis’s eye again, like a flirtatious girl. It made him prickle to be looked at like that, with amusement, when he had managed to so ably defend himself and his crew since he’d taken up command.   
  
“What do you want?” Kozmotis hissed, and Jack clicked his tongue. Kozmotis tried his hand again, and again, the skin starting to burn where the ice was gripped so tightly around it. 

“Not like that…” Jack cooed.

The boy stepped closer to Kozmotis, their gazes locked until the general saw a ship swim out near the edge of his boat. He wanted to cry out to his crew, who he could hear scampering on the deck even now, undoubtedly arming themselves for the pirates. A cold, smooth palm found his face, though, and he felt his cheek and his lips tingle again with a numbness as Jack forced Kozmotis’s gaze back to his own.

He saw his own eyes reflected in Jack’s as the glow of the _Dreamweaver_ started to shutter - he saw them go wide, saw a panic he had not shown since he’d been a young boy, barely able enough to hold a sword, let alone use it. If the ship’s power failed, all failed, and he could not think of what could possibly be the cause of such misfortune. 

Not, at least, until he realized he could see the reflection of his own eyes in Jack’s because Jack’s eyes shuttered, too; trapped between the shadow of the blue planet and its moon, star white flickered with void black.

Jack leaned in, until Kozmotis could not see him. He could only feel that his breath burned cold like the ice on his arm, could only watch as his shadow stretched and warped and multiplied, swimming like fearlings across the deck of his ship, spinning up around the masts, painting the sails that the pirates were weaving ever closer to.

They weren’t descending, he realized; the ships were circling like a flock of birds, waiting for the darkness to take the ship. 

“That’s more like it,” Jack said, grinning as Kozmotis at last broke his hand away from the ship’s helm. 

He’d danced back quickly enough to avoid his blade, and despite the churning in his stomach, Pitchiner squared off with him, keeping the tip of his sword outward as they circled each other. 

“How do you know me?” he asked. “Have I wronged you in some way? As you’re not a fearling yourself, I can imagine precious little reason you’d need fear. From myself, of all people. A predator needs only prey.”

When Jack surged forth, he tried to strike out again - to keep him away, if not to injure. But the boy danced again, kicked up and in, and was soon arm-in-arm with the general, sweeping him around the deck as if he were the bigger man, and Kozmotis weighed as little as a song.

“I know your fear… I know you,” Jack told him. “And now that we’ve been formally introduced… I think the real fun can begin.”

The tell-tale crackle of ice was at his arms once more, and they burned all the worse for having Jack touch them directly. He grit his teeth rather than cry out in pain, but the guttering light of his ship began to space out further and further, the glow gradually disappearing, and he heard behind him as the first of the ships broke out of the flock, releasing a crew of fearlings onto the Dreamweaver’s deck.

The clash of battle behind him was enough to make Kozmotis try to strain away from Jack with all his might, but the boy only held him more firmly, dragging him through their dance.

Infuriated, Kozmotis at last slammed one heel down into Jack’s foot.

In truth, he had not expected much to happen - much less that the boy would so suddenly break contact with him, his body disappearing into little more than cold air and shadow as he seemed to reform a few feet away, rubbing a bare foot. 

Kozmotis made a break for the lower decks, but found the reason no help had been forthcoming - access to the passage up or down from the helm had been cut off by a thick wall of ice. Rather unfortunately, no amount of stamping would help him there, and he found that after a moment, the ice seemed to lunge up after his foot. 

He was only able to escape the horrible feeling of it briefly - another blast from Jack knocked him back, and as he got up, he saw the boy’s shadow stretch over the top of his own, thicker and darker and more real, somehow. His knees creaked and popped as ice encased his boots, and Jack came to stand beside him.

The cold touch that ran over his cheek now was enough to make his eyes water, but that was not the real horror of the situation. The real horror was watching his crew below, buffeted again and again by waves of fearlings, who were slowly gaining the tide of battle on the dimming ship.

“What do you _want_?!” Kozmotis demanded, but even he could hear the harried quality of the aggravation in his voice; he could feel his heart hammering, his stomach sink.

Jack leaned down, setting his cheek against Kozmotis’s own as he looked on the carnage with a hum.

“Oh, general...Just you, and your fear…” Jack told him. “And a little fun.”

  
  



End file.
